August Marks Busiest Month Ever for Oakland

Port of Oakland Authority announced Sep. 21 that the month of August w
as the busiest ever at this port with over 125,000 TEUs of loaded carg
o moving through the port's marine terminals. Container totals for bot
h inbound and outbound cargoes were strong, and the overall monthly ca
rgo volume increased by 14.3% in comparison to the August 1999 figures
. For the first eight months of 2000 through August, Oakland's import
cargo increased by 5.7% (48,887 TEUs), outbound cargo by 8.3% (76,468
TEUs), and overall cargo volume was up by 7.3% (125,355 TEUs).
"The strong trade growth we are seeing reflects our overall Vision 20
00 strategies of enhancing northern California's intermodal rail conne
ctions while at the same time ensuring sufficient terminal capacity is
maintained to serve this important market", said Chuck Foster, the Po
rt of Oakland's executive director. "We have consistently achieved 6%
average annual growth over the past ten years, and foresee achieving
over 2,000,000 TEUs of annual container through-put as early as 2002."
Oakland will see the opening of a number of new transportation facilit
ies over the next few months including the greatly enhanced Union Paci
fic intermodal railyard and a new marine container terminal now under
construction along the Oakland Estuary. Four super-cranes now under c
onstruction by ZPMC of Shanghai China will be delivered to this contai
ner terminal in late October.